The name of God

What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; (WS). Well the bard may have had a point and yet who can deny the importance of names. Plants are plants but flowers and weeds are seen in very different lights. If names were of little or no importance then why would people be so offended when called names by others. My name Michael is an angelic name, so is Lucifer and yet I have never heard of anyone naming their child Lucifer. Names in and of themselves may, at the outset be nothing more than a jumble of sounds expressed in letters but in time they take on associations that touch our emotions and thoughts and in doing so have power to govern our behaviour. Many human names have trade associations such as butcher, baker, smith and so on where the individual with the name worked at a given trade and the two became one. So with God man has associated many names to what he has perceived to be God. Such names often are descriptive of the deity by way of character or action. We aim in the show to consider some of the many names by which God ,deity has been called with a view to discovering what these names can tell us of the way God has been understood down through the ages.